My ecological journey started in the forests of the
Himalaya. My father
was a forest conservator, and my mother became a farmer after fleeing
the tragic partition of India and Pakistan. It is from the Himalayan forests
and ecosystems that I learned most of what I know about ecology. The songs
and poems our mother composed for us were about trees, forests, and India’s
forest civilizations.

My involvement in the contemporary ecology movement began
with “Chipko,” a nonviolent response to the large-scale deforestation
that was taking place in the Himalayan region.

In the 1970s, peasant women from my region in the Garhwal
Himalaya had come out in defense of the forests.

Logging had led to landslides and floods, and scarcity
of water, fodder, and fuel. Since women provide these basic needs, the
scarcity meant longer walks for collecting water and firewood, and a heavier
burden.

Women knew that the real value of forests was not the timber
from a dead tree, but the springs and streams, food for their cattle,
and fuel for their hearths. The women declared that they would hug the
trees, and the loggers would have to kill them before killing the trees.

A folk song of that period said:
These beautiful oaks and rhododendrons,
They give us cool water
Don’t cut these trees
We have to keep them alive.

In 1973, I had gone to visit my favorite forests and swim
in my favorite stream before leaving for Canada to do my Ph.D. But the
forests were gone, and the stream was reduced to a trickle.

When officials arrived at the forest,
the women held up lighted lanterns although it was broad daylight: “We
have come to teach you forestry.”

I decided to become a volunteer for the Chipko movement,
and I spent every vacation doing pad yatras (walking pilgrimages), documenting
the deforestation and the work of the forest activists, and spreading
the message of Chipko.

One of the dramatic Chipko actions took place in the Himalayan
village of Adwani in 1977, when a village woman named Bachni Devi led
resistance against her own husband, who had obtained a contract to cut
trees. When officials arrived at the forest, the women held up lighted
lanterns although it was broad daylight. The forester asked them to explain.
The women replied, “We have come to teach you forestry.” He retorted,
“You foolish women, how can you prevent tree felling by those who know
the value of the forest? Do you know what forests bear? They produce profit
and resin and timber.”

The women sang back in chorus:
What do the forests bear?
Soil, water, and pure air.
Soil, water, and pure air
Sustain the Earth and all she bears.

Beyond Monocultures

From Chipko, I learned about biodiversity and biodiversity-based
living economies; the protection of both has become my life’s mission.
As I described in my book Monocultures of the Mind, the failure to understand
biodiversity and its many functions is at the root of the impoverishment
of nature and culture.

When nature is a teacher, we ­co-create
with her—we recognize her agency and her rights.

The lessons I learned about diversity in the Himalayan
forests I transferred to the protection of biodiversity on our farms.
I started saving seeds from farmers’ fields and then realized we needed
a farm for demonstration and training. Thus Navdanya Farm was started
in 1994 in the Doon Valley, located in the lower elevation Himalayan region
of Uttarakhand Province. Today we conserve and grow 630 varieties of rice,
150 varieties of wheat, and hundreds of other species. We practice and
promote a biodiversity-intensive form of farming that produces more food
and nutrition per acre. The conservation of biodiversity is therefore
also the answer to the food and nutrition crisis.

Navdanya, the movement for biodiversity conservation and
organic farming that I started in 1987, is spreading. So far, we’ve worked
with farmers to set up more than 100 community seed banks across India.
We have saved more than 3,000 rice varieties. We also help farmers make
a transition from fossil-fuel and chemical-based monocultures to biodiverse
ecological systems nourished by the sun and the soil.

Biodiversity has been my teacher of abundance and freedom,
of cooperation and mutual giving.

Rights of Nature On the Global Stage

When nature is a teacher, we ­co-create with her—we recognize
her agency and her rights. That is why it is significant that Ecuador has recognized the “rights
of nature” in its constitution. In April 2011,
the United Nations General Assembly­—inspired by the constitution of Ecuador
and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth initiated
by Bolivia—organized a conference on harmony with nature as part of Earth
Day celebrations. Much of the discussion centered on ways to transform
systems based on domination of people over nature, men over women, and
rich over poor into new systems based on partnership.

We need to overcome the wider and deeper
apartheid—an eco-apartheid based on the illusion of separateness of humans
from nature in our minds and lives.

The U.N. secretary general’s report, “Harmony with Nature,”
issued in conjunction with the conference, elaborates on the importance
of reconnecting with nature: “Ultimately, environmentally destructive
behavior is the result of a failure to recognize that human beings are
an inseparable part of nature and that we cannot damage it without severely
damaging ourselves.”

Separatism is indeed at the root of disharmony with nature
and violence against nature and people. As the prominent South African
environmentalist Cormac
Cullinan points out, apartheid means separateness.
The world joined the anti-apartheid movement to end the violent separation
of people on the basis of color. Apartheid in South Africa was put behind
us. Today, we need to overcome the wider and deeper apartheid—an eco-apartheid
based on the illusion of separateness of humans from nature in our minds
and lives.

The Dead-Earth Worldview

The war against the Earth began with this idea of separateness.
Its contemporary seeds were sown when the living Earth was transformed
into dead matter to facilitate the industrial revolution. Monocultures
replaced diversity. “Raw materials” and “dead matter” replaced a vibrant
Earth. Terra Nullius (the empty land, ready for occupation regardless
of the presence of indigenous peoples) replaced Terra Madre (Mother Earth).

This philosophy goes back to Francis Bacon, called the
father of modern science, who said that science and the inventions that
result do not “merely exert a gentle guidance over nature’s course; they
have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations.”

Robert Boyle, the famous 17th-century chemist and a governor
of the Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the New England
Indians, was clear that he wanted to rid native people of their ideas
about nature. He attacked their perception of nature “as a kind of goddess”
and argued that “the veneration, wherewith men are imbued for what they
call nature, has been a discouraging impediment to the empire of man over
the inferior creatures of God.”

The death-of-nature idea allows a war to be unleashed against
the Earth. After all, if the Earth is merely dead matter, then nothing
is being killed.

As philosopher and historian Carolyn Merchant points out,
this shift of perspective—from nature as a living, nurturing mother to
inert, dead, and manipulable matter—was well suited to the activities
that would lead to capitalism. The domination images created by Bacon
and other leaders of the scientific revolution replaced those of the nurturing
Earth, removing a cultural constraint on the exploitation of nature. “One
does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrails for gold, or mutilate
her body,” Merchant wrote.

What Nature Teaches

Today, at a time of multiple crises intensified by globalization,
we need to move away from the paradigm of nature as dead matter. We need
to move to an ecological paradigm, and for this, the best teacher is nature
herself.

This is the reason I started the Earth University/Bija
Vidyapeeth at Navdanya’s farm.

India’s best ideas have come where man
was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds.

The Earth University teaches Earth Democracy, which is
the freedom for all species to evolve within the web of life, and the
freedom and responsibility of humans, as members of the Earth family,
to recognize, protect, and respect the rights of other species. Earth
Democracy is a shift from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism. And since we
all depend on the Earth, Earth Democracy translates into human rights
to food and water, to freedom from hunger and thirst.

Because the Earth University is located at Navdanya, a
biodiversity farm, participants learn to work with living seeds, living
soil, and the web of life. Participants include farmers, school children,
and people from across the world. Two of our most popular courses are
“The A-Z of Organic Farming and Agroecology,” and “Gandhi and Globalization.”

The Poetry of the Forest

The Earth University is inspired by Rabindranath Tagore,
India’s national poet and a Nobel Prize laureate.

Tagore started a learning center in Shantiniketan in West
Bengal, India, as a forest school, both to take inspiration from nature
and to create an Indian cultural renaissance. The school became a university
in 1921, growing into one of India’s most famous centers of learning.

The forest teaches us enoughness: as a
principle of equity, how to enjoy the gifts of nature without exploitation
and accumulation.

Today, just as in Tagore’s time, we need to turn to nature
and the forest for lessons in freedom.

In “The Religion of the Forest,” Tagore wrote about the
influence that the forest dwellers of ancient India had on classical Indian
literature. The forests are sources of water and the storehouses of a
biodiversity that can teach us the lessons of democracy—of leaving space
for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. Tagore
saw unity with nature as the highest stage of human evolution.

In his essay “Tapovan” (Forest of Purity), Tagore writes:
“Indian civilization has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration,
material and intellectual, in the forest, not the city. India’s best ideas
have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes,
away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual
evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fueled the culture of
Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced
by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play
in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season,
in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity,
of democratic pluralism, thus became the principle of Indian civilization.”

Video:
Teachers for a Living WorldWhile Ivy League schools marvel at
India’s economic growth, Vandana Shiva’s University of the Seed looks
to the earth—and Gandhi—for guidance.

It is this unity in diversity that is the basis of both
ecological sustainability and democracy. Diversity without unity becomes
the source of conflict and contest. Unity without diversity becomes the
ground for external control. This is true of both nature and culture.
The forest is a unity in its diversity, and we are united with nature
through our relationship with the forest.

In Tagore’s writings, the forest was not just the source
of knowledge and freedom; it was the source of beauty and joy, of art
and aesthetics, of harmony and perfection. It symbolized the universe.

In “The Religion of the Forest,” the poet says that our
frame of mind “guides our attempts to establish relations with the universe
either by conquest or by union, either through the cultivation of power
or through that of sympathy.”

The forest teaches us union and compassion.

The forest also teaches us enoughness: as a principle of
equity, how to enjoy the gifts of nature without exploitation and accumulation.
Tagore quotes from the ancient texts written in the forest: “Know all
that moves in this moving world as enveloped by God; and find enjoyment
through renunciation, not through greed of possession.” No species in
a forest appropriates the share of another species. Every species sustains
itself in cooperation with others.

The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning
of the joy of living.

The conflict between greed and compassion, conquest and
cooperation, violence and harmony that Tagore wrote about continues today.
And it is the forest that can show us the way beyond this conflict.

Vandana Shiva wrote this article for What Would Nature Do?, the Winter 2012 issue
of YES! Magazine. Shiva is an internationally renowned activist for biodiversity
and against corporate globalization, and author of Stolen Harvest: The
Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability,
and Peace; Soil Not Oil; and Staying Alive. The last section of this essay
was adapted by the author from “Forest and Freedom,” written by Shiva
and published in the May/June 2011 edition of Resurgence magazine.
Shiva is a YES! contributing editor.

Nitrogen is the most common element in the atmosphere.
Plants can’t grow without it. Carbon is essential to life: 18 percent
of a human body and 50 percent of a tree is carbon. Left alone, natural
systems maintain cycles that keep these elements circulating where they’re
needed and in the right amounts. But we’ve pulled nitrogen out of the
air to feed plants and put carbon, from burning coal and oil, into the
air. We’ve thrown natural cycles out of balance. Excess carbon is heating
the planet. Excess nitrogen is poisoning the air and water. In order
to have the clean water, healthy ecosystems, and stable climate we need
to survive, we’ll have to stop overloading the systems.

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